Author: wiltwhatman
Andy Brennan, Uncultivated taste and getting out of the way of good taste
Andy Brennan’s Uncultivated is like slow food. But cantankerous, slightly drunk and on steroids.
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The Past is a Farming Country…
You are always in time. On time. Out of time. On a farm. Always. Seasonal time. Geological time. Daytime and night time. Deep Time and no time. You are in the time of fertility and the time of harvest. Your year might be framed by frost time. Sow after the last harvest before the first […]
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Waiting for a Swarm: What bees mean to me
I’m waiting for a swarm of bees. If it happens, it will be quick. A kind of inverse tornado calmly and efficiently funneling themselves down, by the thousand, and in to the hive entrance. Up to twenty thousand of them. And it is done. The colony has reproduced. Swarms begin when the workers in an […]
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The birds and the bees: Hawthorn Hill Nature Diary 01
I have time, in recovery. From a minor surgery. Nothing major. Nothing threatening. Just. Enough. To slow. Me. Down.
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Building Bee Hives and Mid Life Crises
This is how I begin with bees. I make hives. To catch wild swarms. And to feel like I am not old. I build top bar hives. They mirror the kind of tree trunks bees evolved to like. Thick walls. Dark. Secure. Dry. It feels good to work with my hands on this. Simple carpentry. […]
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Lambing 2021 begins
Long stretches of boredom and grinding work interspersed with fear, terror, exhaustion and joy. It’s lambing 2021. And it’s started.
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Splitting Wood For a Friend Indeed
I’m swinging a maul. Splitting wood in the cooling bright night.
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Lambing 2020
Lambing is almost done. Sweat, tears, heartbreak, joy and new life, on the farm and for the farm
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A mornings work and pine martens.
It is morning on the farm. Feeding time. Crows break from the treetops in an awkward clutter as I rattle my feed bucket on our lane. There is a raven amongst them. Fiach Dubh, the Black Hunter. I can tell by the sound. Their long flight feathers beat the skin of the air like a […]
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Messy by nature
There are farms with lines of white stones that pick out the borders of perfectly crisp lawns. Striped. Formal and formed. There are farms with trim hedges that behave themselves. Rectangular boxes of clean green lines that picture frame their fields. There are farms with fields of ryegrass and clover, uncluttered by wildflowers or weeds. […]
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